Does performing Trip attempts every round ruin Suspension of Disbelief?

[hong]

First you assume everyone...except ONE major bad guy is a minion.

One might generally assume that the label "BBEG" implies there will not be more than one, or perhaps two in an adventure. And there is more than one encounter in a day, at least the way most people play D&D.

Where in 4e is this assumption backed up, you sure are using alot of assumptions to back up your arguments here. and this just seems boring from a play perspective to only fight minions except for one fight.

You were the one who wanted simulation as opposed to "fun". Don't complain if exhaustive simulation turns out not to be fun.

Why is someone who uses trips, throws, disarms, locks and leverage to fight "annoying"? Sounds pretty imaginative, out of the box, and exciting to me. Remember the mantra of 4e... "Say yes". I mean how is this anymore annoying that a fighter who always wants to use his greataxe for better damage all the time or a rogue who wants to use ranged attacks all the time to avoid getting too close to enemies? It's called a fighting style.

See, there are shutdown powers and there are not-shutdown powers.

 

[mmu1]

By defeating one bad guy per round for 6+ rounds. Yes, Virginia, you do not need a specific "I trip you" power to trip 6 bad guys in a row.

What if you want to, say... trip the same non-minion guy 2 or 3 times, all in one fight?

Or you want to use trips and disarms as a delaying tactic, without knocking people unconscious?

Both of those are pretty much a staple in cinematic wuxia-inspired combat.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Give it up Hong, you're beaten! 4e cannot accurately portray Steven Segal movies (only with him swinging a 20 foot long chain with spikes on it) and therefore it FAILS! hahahaha....

Seriously, though, this:

You were the one who wanted simulation as opposed to "fun". Don't complain if exhaustive simulation turns out not to be fun.

is win. If somebody wants to play Knock Down Somebody Every Turn guy, and that's important enough that they stick with a system that lets them do that, hey, whateve floats your boat.

(By the way, there are a ton of 'knock enemy around' powers. They don't all knock them prone, but there's a bunch of em. If you really want that kind of schtick, it's available at higher levels. Or, hmm, you could be a fighter and shove people around at will.)

 

[Rechan]

Since there aren't really, well, any unarmed combat rules whatsoever, isn't saying "You can trip a lot with martial arts" sort've pointless? There's no martial arts in the ruleset. Yet.

 

[Remathilis]

Still not sure what the problem is.

Make the Pc who wants to trip make a Str check against the opponents reflex. Give a +2 DM-Friend bonus to larger foes, -2 for smaller.

Hit: your foe lands flat on his hiney.
Miss: Your foe laughs at you

Net effect: You just spent a standard action to make an attack (without proficiency or magical item bonus) to make a foe fall prone. No damage. The benefit is that your foe now has a penalty to hit you, grants CA, and will provoke an OA if he gets up. No where NEAR as valuable as using an encounter power, and probably not even as good as Tide of Iron. All your doing is making the rogue very, very happy for a round at the expense of your own attack.

Unlike 3.5, there is no follow up attack, no multiple trips in a round, no using at trip in an AoO to re-trip them, and now silly formula to determine if you can trip them.

Its all on Page 42 of the DMG: Additional Rules. That + Common sense can put trip, disarm, or any other combat maneuver back into D&D. Just don't expect them to be as good as they were in 3.5...

PS: GO first post on ENW2!

 

[mmadsen]

You can try to trip as often as you like, but you get it only actually done if your opponent drops to 0, or if your using a power that actually causes your opponent to go prone.

You can't play a character that chops people of with every strike, either, but you can always play a character that tries to do this every round.

So you can "try" to trip every round, knowing with absolute certainty that it cannot work. Splendid. Problem solved.

And what do you think all those slide, push and pull effects represent? [...] You can pretend* all this is you dropping the enemy, he stumbling around until he stands somewhere else.

This is missing an important point. It's not a problem if a trip attack doesn't always work. In real life, not all take-down attempts work flawlessly. It's also not a problem that the wrestler sometimes shifts his opponent rather than taking him down. In fact, that's quite realistic.

The problem is that the player is making a decision about which of these happens, and he has limited numbers of each outcome to choose from.

It's all handled in a very meta-game fashion, which some people obviously don't mind, but others mind quite a bit.

I know that not everyone likes to pretend something happens that is not explicitly described in rules. But the last time I looked, the game rules did not contain rules on emotional states of NPCs like "in love" or "happy", their favorite foods or their desire for moneys, ...

There is a world of difference between things not covered by the rules and things that are explicitly covered by the rules in ways that don't work, that don't model the "reality" of the game world.

 

[hong]

What if you want to, say... trip the same non-minion guy 2 or 3 times, all in one fight?

Or you want to use trips and disarms as a delaying tactic, without knocking people unconscious?

Both of those are pretty much a staple in cinematic wuxia-inspired combat.

Cinematic wuxia-inspired combat is also characterised by people who tend not to be slowed down when they get knocked to the floor. They just bounce back up and keep fighting. This is handled by turning most knockdowns into generic attack penalties, if you bother with it at all; it can just as easily be handled as colour separate to the actual mechanics.

 

[Imaro]

One might generally assume that the label "BBEG" implies there will not be more than one, or perhaps two in an adventure. And there is more than one encounter in a day, at least the way most people play D&D.

Right, so that once a day power can only be used on one enemy. No? Not to mention the enemies that aren't BBEG's and aren't minions either. Right?

You were the one who wanted simulation as opposed to "fun". Don't complain if exhaustive simulation turns out not to be fun.

In a simulation I'd be able to attempt to trip, with a chance for success, more than once in a whole day. So this argument makes no sense.

See, there are shutdown powers and there are not-shutdown powers.

So again, you're problem is with 3e's mechanics fo tripping...not the fact that a character based around doing this often in fights breaks verisimilitude or is objectively annoying. Ok but we aren't discussing 3e's rules for tripping were discussing the act itself within a game context. Anyway I'm through hong, we won't see eye to eye so we don't really need to discuss it anymore.

 

[BraveSirRobin]

You do realize that knights (in armor) used stances, weapon locks, throws, etc. It's not just a "martial arts" thing.

You brought up the Steven Segal example as why it is reasonable to expect continous trip attempts. Is it realistic to expect continous weapon locks and throws against armored opponents? I don't. Then again, I really don't look to D&D, in any of its editions, for realism.

 

[Imaro]

You brought up the Steven Segal example as why it is reasonable to expect continous trip attempts. Is it realistic to expect continous weapon locks and throws against armored opponents? I don't. Then again, I really don't look to D&D, in any of its editions, for realism.

Actually I brought up the Steven Segal example as a cinematic one...however when someone claims it's not realistic, well then I will also bring up realistic one's as well.